1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fluorescent material and a light-emitting apparatus employing the same, and more specifically, it relates to a fluorescent material having a quantum effect and a light-emitting apparatus implementing white emission with the same. This light-emitting apparatus is preferably employed as an illuminator such as a backlight for a full-color display and a liquid crystal panel, for example.
2. Description of the Background Art
For example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 11-340516 (1999) discloses an exemplary display and illuminator including fluorescent materials and a light-emitting device serving as a light source exciting the same. The aforementioned Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 11-340516 discloses a technique of employing a display or an illuminator including two or three types of ZnCdSe semiconductor microcrystals having different particle sizes of not more than twice the Bohr radius of excitons as fluorescent materials and a GaN-based semiconductor light-emitting device as a light source exciting the same for obtaining white emission by exciting the fluorescent materials with excitation light emitted from the excitation light source, converting fluorescent light components to secondary light components of green and red or green, red and blue and mixing the same with each other.
When the inventors prepared a white light-emitting apparatus according to the technique described in the aforementioned Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 11-340516, however, it was recognized that the emission intensities of blue and green fluorescent materials constituting white light were remarkably reduced as compared with a red fluorescent material to damage the color balance and the light-emitting apparatus attained neither sufficient color rendering nor sufficient emission efficiency for serving as an illuminator.